Make Your Own Stained Glass Leaves

Fall….. the time of year when the trees change from a mass of green to a beautiful display of colors. Now, if your children are anything like my country kids, well during the fall they have to pick up what seems like EVERY beautifully colored leaf they find and attempt to bring it in the house. I say attempt, because around here, I have had to put a stop to bringing large numbers of real leaves into the house.

Why? Well because, the leaves get left around and dry out. Eventually the dog or cats find them and try to eat them making a mess. Leaves just collect in weird places, like in the furniture!  Just over all a messy headache. I love that my children enjoy the beauty of nature, I do! But to be honest, I only want to vacuum, let’s say twice a day, no more.

So what is a mama to do when the young long for beautiful fall leaves? Craft some! This simple project really does add a touch of color and fun to a room without the perpetual mess of real leaves. So let’s get started……

I did allow one leaf in the house to use as a template for this project. After tracing the pattern of the leaf on to fall colored construction paper, we cut them out. Next we folded our cut out leaves in half and cut out the centers to give us a picture frame effect. Now for the mess, we tore pieces of tissue paper up so we could use it to create the stained class effect. Of course some of those little pieces got everywhere and I had to vacuum, again. I vacuum a lot around here!

Using clear contact paper, we put the frame on it and then filled the “frame” in with torn tissue paper. Once the tissue paper was in, we put a second piece of contact paper on the back to seal it in. Next we simply cut around the the leaf shape (leaving a small edge) to get ride of the extra contact paper. We used scotch tape and hung the leaves in the windows. The leaves look wonderful with the sun shining in through them! I must say, seeing the leave makes me smile, since not only did my son make them, but I will NEVER have to vacuum them up! And I am really getting tired of vacuuming………..

38 thoughts on “Make Your Own Stained Glass Leaves

  1. These are so pretty! Thanks for sharing!

    Stopping by from the Mom's Library linky. 🙂

  2. Perfect! I found this at the Homeacre Hop. I tried a melted crayon stained glass leaf project last fall, but breaking up the crayons was tedious, and my son couldn't really help with melting the crayons… so it was basically a project that I did instead of my three year old! These look much more manageable and age appropriate. Thanks. 🙂

  3. I remember doing something like this with my own son's.
    So very pretty and lots of fun.

  4. What a fun fall craft! I just pinned this and will be featuring it this week at Meaningful Mama. Thanks so much for linking up at Mom's Library. I hope you'll be there this week too.

  5. Thanks so much for linking up at Teach Me Tuesday. You are very much appreciated! Hope to see you again this week! http://3glol.net/2014/09/01/teach-tuesday-19/

    3GLOL

  6. Thanks for coming and linking up at #The Weekend Social. Please be sure to come back next week starting Thursdays at 9PM EST on KitchenDreaming.com ! I hope to see you there!

  7. These are so cute I can not wait to make some with my son. Plus like you I do not like to vacuum so thank you Jesus for the hard wood floors we have But we have to sweep multiple times a day which stinks.

  8. What a perfect craft for my grandchildren. They are coming this weekend and I love to find fun things we can do together. Tahnks for sharing.

  9. What an easy and creative idea to keep kids entertained. Thanks for sharing with us at #WednesdaysWisdom

  10. Great project for the kids. I know the boys I work with might enjoy this! Thanks for posting – found you on Friendship Friday blog hop, and I hope you'll hop on by 🙂 https://growinguprightuk.com/?p=224

  11. We made these at school one year and they were so pretty. The light shining through the windows was just beautiful !!! Thanks for reminding me of this craft project.

  12. Neat and simple idea. I think my children are a little old for this, but maybe I will remember this when we have grandchildren.

    Thanks for sharing this with us on the Homestead Blog Hop.

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